Grand Chessboard American Geostrategic Imperatives
As the twentieth century draws to a close, the United States has emerged as the world’s only superpower: no other nation possesses comparable military and economic power or has interests that bestride the globe. Yet the critical question facing America remains unanswered: What ought to be the nation’s global system for preserving it is particular position in the world? Zbigniew Brzezinski tackles this question head-on in this incisive and pathbreaking book.The Grand Chessboard presents Brzezinski’s bold and provocative geostrategic resourcefulness for American preeminence in the twenty-first century. Central to his analysis is the exercise of power on the Eurasian landmass, which is home to the biggest portion of the globe’s population, natural resources, and economic activity. Stretching from Portugal to the Bering Strait, from Lapland to Malaysia, Eurasia is the ”grand chessboard” on which America’s supremacy will be ratified and challenged in the years to come. The task facing the United States, he argues, is to manage the conflicts and relationships in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East so that no rival superpower arises to threaten our interests or our well-being.The heart of The Grand Chessboard is Brzezinski’s analysis of the four critical regions of Eurasia and of the stakes for America in each arenaEurope, Russia, Central Asia, and East Asia. The primary fault lines may seem familiar, but the implosion of the Soviet Union has devised new rivalries and new relationships, and Brzezinski maps out the strategic ramifications of the new geopolitical realities. He explains, for example: Why France and Germany will play pivotal geostrategic roles, whereas Britain and Japan will not. Why NATO elaboration offers Russia the chance to undo the errors of the past, and why Russia cannot afford to toss this probability aside. Why the fate of Ukraine and Azerbaijan are so necessary to America. Why looking at China as a menace is likely to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Why America is not only the original genuinely global superpower but also the lastand what the significations are for America’s legacy. Brzezinski’s surprising and basi conclusions often turn traditionalisti wisdom on it is head as he lays the groundwork for a new and compelling vision of America’s critical interests. Once, again, Zbigniew Brzezinski provides our nation with a philosophical and practical guide for preserving and managing our hard-won global power.
From Kirkus ReviewsThe former national security advisor is still a believer in geopolitics after all these years. Like most foreign-policy aficionados weaned on the Cold War, Brzezinski (Out of Control, 1993) has been forced by the disintegration of the Soviet Union to broaden his perspective–but not very far. He sees the US as the only global superpower, but disability to maintain it is hegemony indefinitely means that “geostrategic skill” is essential. To what end is not specified beyond the vague shaping of “a genuinely cooperative international community” that is in “the rudimentary interests of humankind,” but in this genre, goals are normally assumed rather than examined. In any case, Brzezinski casts Eurasia as the playing field upon which the world’s fate is determined and analyzes the future prospects or potentials in Europe, the former Soviet Union, the Balkans (interpreted broadly), and the Far East. Like a grandmaster in chess, he plots his scheme assorted moves in advance, envisioning a three-stage development. Geopolitical pluralism must introductory be promoted to defuse challenges to America, then compatible global collaborators will have to be produced to give hope or courage to joint operation underneath American leadership, and in the end the actual sharing of global political obligation may be considered. The twin poles of this system are a united Europe in the West and China in the East; the central regions are more problematic and, for Brzezinski, not as critical in constructing a stable remainder of power. This modified version of East-West geopolitics is worth taking badly but it is also an awful example of how a perspective may be revised without actually being rethought. (Radio satellite tour) — Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Review…as sobering as it is timely… — American Spectator, David Aikman
At it is best, The Grand Chessboard makes permanent contributions to the national debate over American alien policy and power. At it is worst, it demonstrates the need for contemporary statesmen and political thinkers to immerse themselves more deeply in the rich tradition of Anglo-American strategic thought that brought primary Britain and now the United States to global preeminence at an astonishingly low cost. — The Los Angeles Times Sunday Book Review, Walter Russell Mead
Brzezinski has now stated and restated his concerns. His books are there for any political leader to use as material for future policy declarations. But it is difficult in the current circumstance to imagine much of a contest to take up Brzesinski’s ideas, nonetheless well they are argued here. — The New York Times Book Review, Bernard Gwertzman
About the Author Zbigniew Brzezinski, the National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter, is a counselor and trustee at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a professor of American alien policy at the School of Advanced International Studies, the Johns Hopkins University, both located in Washington, D.C. His a good deal of books include The Choice and The Grand Chessboard. He lives in Washington, D.C.
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80 of 83 persons found the following review helpful.
 A Spine Chilling divination of present circumstances.
By R. D. Smith
Like others providing their reviews, I rate this book very highly not because it is a real “page turner” or is in particular well written, but because of it is cold Machiavellian analysis of the need to protect and exaggerate the American Empire and what that means to the usual Joe and Jane Citizen.
Three things in this book made my blood run ice cold. The original is the finish absense of any sense of morality in the whole discussion. I do not mean that this is an *im*moral book, it is not a moral book, it is *a*moral in that there is in a literal sense no discussion whatsoever whether what is being proposed is RIGHT or will have to be done. That the recomendations to grow the American Empire are valid is plainly assumed, not proven or even argued. The second thing was the whole discussion on how the political center of mass was Central Eurasia (i.e. the region amongst Turkey and Pakistan and amid Iran and Turkmenistan) and how improbable it was that we were going to be capable to have a significant presence in the region (in the near term) unless we have SOME PERL HARBOR CLASS EVENT to accelerate the populations willingness to receive the costs. Also, This Was Bad because it would delay our necessitated expansion. Then, just on cue, we have the 9/11 attacks, and dang if we don’t end up with a Whole Bunch of military presence all allround the heart of Eurasia… Coincidence? Makes one wonder. As if that is not enough, the book closes with a clear and unambiguous reference to the steps necessitated to get us to the One World Government of the New World Order.
Read it and weep because, as another reviewer stated, he is not predicting the future, he is *planning* the future. Coldly. Methodically.
73 of 79 people found the following review helpful.
A chilling account of Roman-style imperialism
By A
This is how Brzezinski views the (supposedly sovereign) nations of Central Asia:
“The last decade of the twentieth century has witnessed a tectonic shift in world affairs. For the firstborn time ever, a non-Eurasian power has emerged not only as a key arbiter of Eurasian power relations but also as the world’s paramount power. The defeat and collapse of the Soviet Union was the final step in the rapid ascendance of a Western Hemisphere power, the United States, as the sole and, indeed, the firstborn veritably global power…”
“Two basic steps are therefore required: first, to distinguish the geostrategically dynamic Eurasian states that have the power to cause a potentially crucial shift in the international distribution of power and to decipher the central external goals of their respective political elites and the likely aftermaths of their seeking to attain them;… second, to formulate specific U.S. policies to offset, co-opt, and/or control the above…” (p. 40)
– “…To put it in a terminology that harkens back to the more brutal age of ancient empires, the three grand imperatives of imperial geostrategy are to prevent collusion and maintain security dependence among the vassals, to keep tributaries pliant and protected, and to keep the barbarians from coming together.” (p.40)
– “Henceforth, the United States may have to determine how to cope with territorial coalitions that seek to push America out of Eurasia, thereby threatening America’s status as a global power.” (p.55)
– “America is now the only global superpower, and Eurasia is the globe’s central arena. Hence, what happens to the distribution of power on the Eurasian continent will be of decisive importance to America’s global primacy and to America’s historical legacy.” (p.194)
– “That puts a premium on maneuver and manipulation in order to prevent the emergence of a hostile coalition that could finally seek to challenge America’s primacy…” (p. 198)
– “The most prompt task is to make sure that no state or combining of states gains the capacity to expel the United States from Eurasia or even to diminish significantly it is decisive arbitration role.” (p. 198)
– “For Pakistan, the indispensable interest is to gain Geostrategic depth through political influence in Afghanistan – and to deny to Iran the exercise of such influence in Afghanistan and Tajikistan – and to gain in the long run from any pipeline construction linking Central Asia with the Arabian Sea.” (p.139)
And ponder the meaning of these affirmations in a post-9-11 world:
– “Moreover, as America becomes an growingly multi-cultural society, it may find it more difficult to fashion a consensus on alien policy issues, except in the circumstance of a veritably massive and widely sensed direct external threat.” (p. 211)
– “The attitude of the American public toward the external projection of American power has been much more ambivalent. The public supported America’s engagement in World War II largely because of the shock effect of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. (pp 24-5)
To most Americans the people of the world are just that- people, just like us, with a right to self-determination. To Brzezinski, they are merely pawns on a chessboard. Such an imperialist scheme does not make me feel any safer- how did Napoleon’s scheme fare for the French in the long run? Or the Roman emperors for their citizens?
Rome fell, Hitler fell, all imperialist powers in the end fail, because they follow the over-extended geopolitical system advocated by Brzezinski. While our military is busy fighting for oil interests all around the world, who’s observing the front door?
69 of 75 humans found the following review helpful.
 Do experts in strategy love their children too?
By D. Ghica
I read this book with disbelief. Brzezinski was for a long time a strategist, a political planner of the most eminent rank so I have to take him seriously. But I couldn’t support but constantly wonder if the book is for real.
It displays an unabashed and unapologetic view of the U.S. as a world ‘hegemon’ (author’s word) and divides the rest of the world in ‘vassals’ (author’s word), rivals, ‘pivots’ and strategically not relevant countries. Western Europe and Japan are the prominent members of the primary category, Russia and China of the second. The pivots are the countries that have strategic selections indispensable to the U.S., such as the Ukraine. United Kingdom is an (amusing) example of strategically irrelevance.
The book proceeds by systematically and oftentimes tediously analyzing case-by-case scenarios and what-ifs concerning the strategic affect of the policy conclusions of the players (vassals, rivals and pivots) in four main theatres: Europe, Russia, Central Asia and the Far East. The analysis seemed rather un-principled to me but by the end I could discern numerous key points. The most essential of them is that the U.S., in spite of is global hegemony can not afford wars but it has to maintain it is dominance by smartly playing the rivals versus each other so that a major international rival does not emerge.
I think the book’s shocking disregard of democracy and national self-determination is rather consistent with the way the American administration have a tendancy to act in international affairs. Unfortunately, the current administration does not seem to take the book’s main counsel regarding the need for America to refrain from straightout wars and to dominate through smart diplomacy.
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